


When The Booth Goes Bright

by IncorrectEcho



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Mutual Pining, Near Death, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-29
Updated: 2021-02-04
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:48:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24979447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IncorrectEcho/pseuds/IncorrectEcho
Summary: There is something about the room next to Annette’s. The lights are on at midnight, there’s the tapping and then...there’s the feeling there’s an adventure waiting for the girl who dares. So what exactly is it what happens in that dorm room that makes Annette’s heart pound?
Relationships: Annette Fantine Dominic/Linhardt von Hevring
Comments: 11
Kudos: 11





	1. When the flash tries to find you

Garreg Mach was quiet at night time. To an unknowing soul, the Officer’s Academy wouldn’t wake up for another eight hours or so. Nothing but the sounds of nature echoing through the dorms of Fódlan’s brightest.  
But that is to an unknowing soul. As one came closer, there was yet a world to discover. Even at night time.

“When you’re up like all night, everything is just right, when you sing a song that goes ding-ding-a-dong. There will be more sorrow, you have a test tomorrow and you sit alone being ding-dang-dong.”

Annette couldn’t concentrate on her work all day. With the tapping of the foot she tried to hypnotise herself into a working rhythm, but all the song did was make the pages of sigils and runes and incantations dance ‘cross the pages. 

It was close to midnight, if it wasn’t well past. Mercie already slept. She could hear it through the wall. Not that Mercie was a snorer, but she was a wonderful sleeptalker. The shrill but determined voice of Fódlan’s nurse-by-day, ghostbuster-by-night could faintly be heard...by those who pay attention. And let that selective concentration be Annie’s specialty.

She stopped tapping her feet. It was no use, these spells had to wait another day to be discovered. She closed the book and stood up, shoving her chair softly towards her desk.

She heard taps. No, that couldn’t be. “Oh, Ann, you gotta stop staying up so late..it’s making you delirious.” she said to herself. The tapping continued. Annette walked to the other side of the room, to the wall separating Mercie and her and thus to her bed. The tapping continued. Faintly, but real. Right? 

A light shined through a small hole in the wall. Not enough to fill the room, but enough to fill Ann’s mind.

She stepped towards her desk again. Maybe it was a pen stuck between her books, rolling around at the speed of sound, reflecting the moonlight. The tapping did become louder.  
“For Seiros’ sake Ann, you don’t have time for this.” she muttered as she rattled up the spells not perfected yet and her eternally-suppressed internal clock was shaking her up like a bell-clapper.  
The tapping came closer. The light shined brighter.

Ann hung her ear against the wall. The tapping disappeared, being replaced by a different sound. Footsteps. But who at this hour could even be up? The Varley sprout next door didn’t exactly seem a party animal, but from what she heard she wasn’t a night owl either. But it was probably fine. “Ann-Ann-Ann-Ann..Aaaannn..ANN...Ann?” Annette reassured herself that everything was fine. “Bernie is fine. She is probably just bitten by her plant and now she is looking for paper to curl around her finger, but of course the paper gave her an even worse cut so now she’s sucking her thumb and walking around to heal. That’s logical, makes perfect sense, definitely not an intruder coming to kidnap her or….”

No, that didn’t make any sense, but Annette’s mind couldn’t help but wander. She snapped her fingers in front of her eyes and in routine, went back to her desk, pressed her pen against the paper and drew a circle as was present in her handbook. But the footsteps continued. The light kept shining. Ever coming closer and then…..faintly disappearing. Finally hypnotised, Annette fell asleep. 

The next morning, three things were pounding around Annette. Her head wasn’t too appreciative of her decision to sleep on a wooden desk instead of her bed and pounded like a demonic beast. With it, her heart beat in synch with her breath, trying to put together how, when and why she woke up.  
“Nonononono that cannot be the sun. Please please please Sun go back to bed too I need the time.” she said to herself as she rushed in her Academy uniform.

Third thing pounding was someone at the door. Annette breathed out slowly, but screamed internally.  
Annie quickly tried to piece together the situation as she tried to fit herself in her skirt that used more belts than Ms. Casagranda in an opera piece. Judging by the hour, it wasn’t Mercie. Mercie would not be so kind as to let her sleep in, nor be so considerate with the volume of the knocking if she did catch her sleep in. Another knock rang through Ann’s entire body, which made her emit a frustrated squeal.  
The knocking stopped. 

“Oh, I should probably check on Bernie real quick.” she said. “Of course, if she’s not there I’m gonna need to write a note. Let me grab some paper reaaal quick.” she said as she tore paper with her spare hand from a book she balanced on her knee.  
The note fell to the ground.

Ann grabbed her book with the same arm she just put through a sleeve and walked towards the door, picking up the note with her spare hand as she very gracefully pliéd to catch the note in one fell swoop. As she caught the note with her hand, she caught the door with her head. Of course. Her head screaming like a battlefield, Annie instead put on a smile and walked straight to class as the bells rang. The day could begin.

“Ding-a-dong, every hour, when ya pick a flower...” Ann sighed and took a seat in Professor’s Hanneman’s class.  
“Today I would like to talk to you about philosophy.” he started the class.  
Annette took a deep breath and tried to concentrate, but Hanneman’s words were but thin air in the classroom. Her mind was racing. What or who was there last night? She analysed the pacing, the sound of footsteps, her heart racing along with it. She breathed in. This lecture was more important for now, and yet she found her hand slipping in her pocket. “Dear Bernadetta…” she started in her mind.  
“Does anyone know what a paradox is?” Hanneman continued.  
Annie drilled the cacophony of steps, hammers and drums in her mind, trying to grasp the situation without making Hanneman suspicious. 

“I am writing you because…” she tried to put the words in her brain, chanting it to the rhythm of the room.  
Because...well that was a good question. Because a killer was out to get her? 

Ugh. She just should’ve slept that night. No bigger mystery than what the teacher is saying when you cannot pay attention.  
She felt the nightmares pulling at her, but with each word Hanneman spoke that she missed, she was launched back into the reality of headaches and less than stellar concentration.  
“So.” Hanneman concluded. “By picking neither bale of hay, the donkey essentially deprived itself of hay and starved. See you next class, where we discuss Zeno, who is probably the most paradoxical person alive that’s not a woman.”

Ann pressed her lips together in a polite faux-chuckle and left the room. 

Quickly, she hurried to her room, bumping into everyone. “Sorry! Sorry!” she said as a precaution for those unfortunate enough to collide with her. She reached for her pocket and took out the note as she fondled her pen through her fingers to start writing mid-flight.

“Watch out.” a green frog-like presence said to her as she charged right into her door again. “Oh, I’m Linhardt. You might’ve heard me last night. I heard you at least, these walls are not exactly soundproof.”  
Ann chuckled by means of apology.  
“You’re a better neighbour than Raphael in that respect, so I moved. Hope it‘s not too much of a bother.” Lin said, letting out the biggest yawn known to man.  
Annie chuckled again and nodded in agreement. Once she looked up, Lin had entered his room already.

So. A new neighbour. Annette’s head could finally rest, but her heart kept pounding. “Linhardt.” she said as she entered her room.  
Lin already started a thunderous accord of books, stapled on top of eachother, opening and closing, with paper ripping from each of them. Annette smiled and sat at her desk, listening to her new favorite composer.


	2. There’s the Girl You Were

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “A fat donkey ass” -Sylvain, correctly answering a question.

Annette opened her eyes, arms stretching to drive the sleep out of her body. Pleasantly surprised by the comfort of her bed, she jumped out of the sheets and kicked them away. Ann liked to rush when there was no rush. It meant she didn’t have to rush when there was a rush. It was silent now, and no slither of light seemed to have entered the room. Still, Annette’s eyes adjusted fine to the dark already. Yet, she inadvertently looked at the small crack in the wall across the room. No light. No light, and yet Ann woke up with the energy of the sun itself. Jumping out of bed, she started humming, then swiveled her body along to her tune. What a good night’s sleep couldn’t do!  
She put on the light in her room and softly sang to herself.

“The world looks sunny, everyone is funny, when you sing a song that goes ding-ding-dong.” 

Her dancing wasn’t exactly flattering, but it did the job of doing away with the excess of energy in Ann’s little ferret body. With the last ding, the bells from the courtyard rang as well.  
Ann jumped back, startled by the bells’ ring. She counted. How many dings could there be? Five? Six? If Lin was still asleep, it couldn’t be that late.  
One, two, three. Ann clapped her hands to the beat. Four, five…

Six…

Seven.

Oh.

Annette started to dress. Class started at eight, so she wanted to get a heads-up on the dining hall goods. She took her books, shoving them from her desk into her hand in an especially rhythmic fashion. Her humming in this time has changed into violent lip-syncing, and her rhythmic walking turned into straight-up Ginger Rogers dancing, making sure every movement in her body was as graceful as possible. She made a finger gun motion with her right hand as she left the room. Good morning Garreg Mach!  
She looked to the left. Linhardt’s door was still closed. Weird.

The courtyard in front of class was quiet at this time. Most preferred the dining hall to start of their day, but Ann liked the cold of the outside. It kept her mind fresh, and reminded her of home. Both in Dominic and in Faerghus, the weather isn’t exactly pleasant for sun-seekers, although Lake Teutates can be nice in the summer. Annie kept herself warm by moving her body to the rhythm of her song.  
With the sun barely peeking through the clouds, Ann’s morning bagel was the perfect temperature. She wondered if anyone noteworthy was in the dining hall. “Seiros Above, Ann.” she said, not knowing that it was more like ‘Seiros to your left when you go up the stairs’.  
“You’re really predictable aren’t ya.” she said to herself. “You’re doing fine here, you’re sitting here, listening to birds….” she argued with herself. “I can’t just pick up all of these books again to go to the dining hall, probably falling in the process…” she said to herself, already accounting for the possibility that her clumsiness would get the better of her. “Not really worth it, just to know that Lin is okay.”  
Even saying his name felt weird. She was just...intrigued by the man that literally lit up the room that day.

Hanneman walked by and gave a knowing nod to Annette. She was always the first ready for class. Normally, she’d sit down immediately and have a chat with her professor, but now her eyes fixated on the red banner, hoping to spot that bit of green.

Tick-tock. Time went immeasurably slow that moment and yet time felt secondary to Annette’s sweeping fantasy. About moments that could be. Riddles that could be solved. She spent the half-hour picking out her favorite scenarios, starting from the presupposition that Lin would indeed show his face again, and then the even greater assumption that Annette wouldn’t run into the Blue Lions classroom the moment he approached. 

All of that wrapped in a pandora’s box of possible ways Lin could think of the little orange that speeded into him. 

She looked over the courtyard and saw that some of her classmates had already entered the lecture hall. She waited some time more. “One Airmid River. Two Airmid River.” she counted, hoping that time was a construct and that everything could unravel in two Airmid Rivers. She sighed. She entered the classroom and took her usual seat at the usual place. 

“Welcome. Today we’ll continue our venture into philosophy.” Hanneman started.  
Annette nodded at the professor and opened her book. Maybe the greatest adventures are best had in theory. 

“Can someone tell me what we discussed last time?” Hanneman asked. Annette looked at her books. No, she couldn’t really. Hopefully he’d give a good summary of last time’s class. Sylvain raised his hand and was handed the room by Hanneman.

“Ass.” he said. Ann closed her eyes and prayed to the goddess. This wasn’t the time for jokes, Sylvain, she thought to herself. It came as quite a shock to her when Hanneman confirmed Sylvain’s answer to be correct. That sure must’ve been an unusual class, like the ones at the end of the year at the School of Sorcery.  
“Very good Sylvain. And just to make sure, what kind of ass were we discussing?” Hanneman continued, trying to find out whether Sylvain actually paid attention or discussed ass of his own accord.  
“A fat donkey ass.” Sylvain answered with a straight face  
“Right…” Hanneman said. “Anyone that wants to explain the parable we’re referring to here?”

Ashe raised his hand, Hanneman nodded. Ashe cleared his throat and started his explanation.  
“So there’s this donkey, or ass, and he’s stuck in the middle between two bales of hay.” he said, supporting each word with a different hand motion. “If the donkey wants to make a rational decision, he wouldn’t have a reason to prefer one bale over the other. So if the donkey wants to make the perfect choice, he can’t and has to wait for the situation to change in favor of either one of the bales. If that doesn’t happen, it will make the only wrong choice, because it will die of hunger.” he said. Hanneman held his thumb up in approval

“Right. At a halfway point, this parable illustrates how one must make choices. If you do not choose one over the other, both might be out of reach. Sometimes, indecision between two subjects will cost you more than going for one of the options.”

Annette waited for Hanneman to confirm the answer, and then wrote all of this down as fast as possible. Diagrams and drawings weren’t needed for now, she’d edit those in later.

“I wonder how this lecture would be with Manuela.” Sylvain bantered with the old man, leaning backwards and putting his feet on his desk. He knew how to get Hanneman to talk about anything but class work: Give him a chance to discuss Manuela’s work ethic and the man became either an anthropologist or a stand-up comedian.  
“Oh, I believe Manuela has a different philosophy curriculum.” Hanneman geared up for one of his punchlines. “Probably about how the glass is either half full, or needs refilling. But, in the case of this specific parable, it means that if Manuela has two men, she will lose both.” Hanneman said as he took a sip of water as if roaring applause filled the room. It really didn’t. A sly smile escaped from Sylvain’s lips.

He shrugged his shoulders and then took place in front of the blackboard again. “Speaking of Manuela, here’s a paradox for you.” he said as he walked away from the blackboard. Annie kept staring blankly. Hanneman’s casual misogyny wasn’t as funny the fifth time.  
“Say, I want to reach the blackboard over there. I take one step forward, which means I’ve now crossed around half of the distance necessary to get there. Now, in order to seize the other halfway, I must take another step forward that gets me half of that.” he said as he took another step forward.  
“Now, I’m pretty close, but as long as I keep dividing everything in halfways, the distance, while becoming smaller, is never completed. I always have another halfway to go. No matter how close I am, I have to take more steps. Ever moving forward.” he said, to give even this philosophical question a philosophical layer.

“Okay everyone let’s take a ten-minute break.” Hanneman said. “If you divide it in halves it might just last more than that.” he said, to hammer in the new, mind-boggling point. 

Immediately, chatter broke out. Usually, it was Sylvain’s antics that garnered the most attention that class, but this time, a different subject ruled the roost in the Blue Lions class. Murder. Thinking about it, Annette didn’t know if this wasn’t another round of what Sylvain did this weekend, but soon more information scattered itself across the room. No murder, but an assassination plot. The Black Eagles were on the case. Rhea was targeted. The Black Eagles were on the case. It was all top secret, but according to Sylvain, Manuela was easy to pressure. The Black Eagles were on the case.  
Was that what she heard that night? Linhardt, walking around in his dorm with tape and paper to recreate the scene of the crime? A diorama of possible entrances in the bellows of Garreg Mach? Or was he practicing his interrogation skills, shining his lamp in the face of one of Bernie’s lost teddy bears? Could that be the shining light that burst through the walls? She could imagine it now. Lin, magnifying glass and all, walking around the room, which has turned into a crime solving centre with red strings tying together the scattered papers, clues and of course, the teddy bear that confessed after thirty-eight hours of hard interrogations? Lin, working hard to draw a composition photo?

Who knew? Ann didn’t.  
No, Annette was rarely in the loop.

She looked at her notes. ‘Always keep moving forward’. ‘There’s always another step.’ ‘Not making a choice is a choice.’, ‘Ass’  
What steps did Annette want to take? She certainly wouldn’t mind a more suspenseful class. The Black Eagles were on the case and the Blue Lions? The Blue Lions she never felt like taking the first step towards knowing. 

Mercie she knew. Mercie was her best friend. But besides her? 

The rest of the conversation went by Ann as she studiously updated her notes until Hanneman resumed class.  
“Let me tell you a story about Loog and the turtle, engaged in a race. And here is when motion again becomes paradoxical.” he started as he got in the flow. Annette was in the starting blocks herself, ready to write down everything.

“Say, we give the turtle a hundred meter head start. Loog starts running for a second and, since he is quite fast according to the legends, he runs five meters. In that same time, the turtle is also on his march. He might run a smaller distance, say two meters. This repeats itself for a few seconds, and Loog is almost caught up now. But for every step Loog takes, the turtle also moves forward. Every time, Loog only gets to the location the turtle was the last second, whereas the turtle always occupies a new spot as he moves forward. In theory, Loog can never catch up.” he said as he crudely drew a turtle on the blackboard.

“Now of course, our common sense says it’s possible and I’m sure Loog has caught a turtle in its lifetime, but these paradoxes have had a great impact on philosophy and show that even a basic thing like motion is a truly magical thing, with quite the range of intricacies.”

The class murmured. Hanneman nodded. “As for the current events, I’m sure Professor Eisner and the knights have it under control.”

The knights. Of course he would be there. All these years, but finally the two would reunite. Ann didn’t know how to feel, but she was determined to hunt down the old man. This is why she was here. Eyes on the prize. Gustave Dominic would run into the wall today. Ann would make sure of it. Her heart raced with memories.

“That concludes today’s class. See you tomorrow.” Hanneman interjected her daydreaming.

Ann got up and approached Hanneman. “Do you know where Professor Eisner might be, professor?” she asked.  
“Black Eagles classroom next door, why?”

Ann sprinted out of the classroom as soon as possible. This was her chance.  
“Miss Annette, why the rush?” Hanneman asked surprised as Annette went out of the door.  
“I have a turtle to catch!” she yelled, almost dropping her notes.

Annie slowly entered the classroom where Byleth sat.  
“Umm..Professor...I have a request for you. If that’s okay” she started out nervously.  
Byleth smiled and nodded.  
“So um...I want to be able to learn all kinds of things. I can’t wait! I have to join your class.” she said in a spur of enthusiasm.

Byleth smiled and nodded. “Okay.”  
“Okay!” Annette replied as she headed out.

“Okay…” she said to herself.  
What was that? Did she just switch classes? Did she take an actual step towards her dreams? Who did she think she was? This wasn’t supposed to happen? She’s leaving Mercie behind? For what? For who?  
Ann only had more questions walking to her room. Sitting on her bed, she looked at the wall. The light was on. She heard sounds. Soon, there would be answers. Soon, there would be reunions.  
Halfway there.  
The first step taken.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! This chapter was a little longer than planned but I wanted to make sure everything was balanced nicely so Hanneman got to be a little dastard, as a treat. 
> 
> So...the Black Eagles huh? I’m sure the classwork Byleth gives is comparable to the rest of the Academy’s, right?
> 
> (Oh, and for those who don’t know, my twitter is @Daisy4Smash. Don’t be shy to follow me there!)


	3. There’s your Trip Abroad

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> World’s best dad makes an appearance.

Annette woke up. Or at least she opened her eyes after closing them once. Ann wasn’t strange to all-nighters. Plenty of tests and exams had been passed this way, but this was a feeling new to Ann. Lack of direction. Professor Eisner’s reputation preceded them and Annette simply did not know what to expect. Solving a murder attempt surely created some precedence for some true adventures. “Yeah, it’s not random. It’s an adventure. It’s...practical learning. It will do you good.” Ann reminded herself.   
The path towards her dreams became blurred, if not halted. It was weird for Annie to not have control like that, to not chase the horizon for a specific speck of shore.   
Maybe it was her clumsiness striking once again, spreading to her mind, tripping over every tree branch in her forest of delusions.   
She stood up. She had to. Class was about to begin. A final glance at the wall revealed nothing about the curriculum of the Ashen Demon, like it hadn’t the last sixteen hours. “Right. Fell right into that one.” when her eyes darted once again to double-check the sleep deprivation induced flicker she was sure she saw in the corner of her eye.

Lin had shown no sign of life throughout the night. No sciencey explosions, not so much as a tap of a pen. Not so much as a breath. The hole in the wall remained pitch-black throughout the night, although after five hours or so, Annette swore she saw a blot in the general area. At this point, she accepted it to be a spectre from one of Mercie’s ghost stories, since that seemed more plausible than Lin showing activity.

She had also learned that Linhardt was a wind mage, so every breeze had her perform the magic trick of thinking about him and causing goosebumps on her arm, while again checking for a appearance of her classmate. Of course, there was also no way to make sure he wasn’t experimenting with ice or fire, so with every drop in the temperature, Annette’s eyes tried to keep themselves warm by doing their exercise of snapping to the wall that she swore got closer too. 

“Sure is hard to get dressed when you’re stupid Ann. You can do it. Concentrate, do it in parts.” she assured herself, while her eyes had different plans. Tick. A glance. Swoop. Another glance. “Not a light switch. Not a paper turning over. Not a yawn.” she told herself every time her head got its morning walk in already. “That was a yawn but it’s your own because you didn’t sleep. Smart.”   
Ann wasn’t a self-deprecating person and knew her talents and appreciated them, which is why she tried to get herself back in her rhythm. Literally.  
Shaking her head one last time, like a horse starting a race, she hummed a song to herself, skirt still in hand.

“And you put the leg right there, and you have another leg. So shake shake shake till the leg touches the ground and kick kick kick till they’re back earthbound.”   
Progressively more interspersed with frustrated grunts, her song did get her fully dressed. 

Night and day faded into one as she took her morning walk. The wind was cold, which caused her face to freeze in a blank stare. Unlike professor Eisner’s face earlier, this stare only meant one thing. “Are you kidding me Dominic?” Ann thought to herself, her eyes popping open in frustration with every whisper of her mind that even dared to suggest Ann switched classes for a boy. 

No, she remembered why she did it. There was only room for one person to make her paranoid beyond recognition, while still controlling her life.   
Her dad would always go on morning walk. Said it freshened up the mind, have the breeze go through the brain. Well. One day he didn’t return. The breeze must’ve blown his brain away.  
With Eisner taking charge of church military affairs, it was possible, nay, plausible, that her father would appear too.  
Ann smiled. Everything has led to this. The School of Sorcery, the Officer’s Academy. All the spells and summoning incantations. This was her endgame.

Annette’s eyes popped open in stone-cold fear. Oh Sothis. This was her endgame. Was she ready to let her goal come to a close? Ready to run into a wall that was surprisingly good at vanishing and briskly walking away from responsibility and love? It was only fair for Annette to return the favor, she thought. She breathed. In and out. Her life wasn’t exactly built for cross-roads. So far it’s mostly been full steam Annette.

Ann walked around the Officer’s Academy one more time, sorting her thoughts with literal sorting hand motions and mumbling. “We’re close, we’re close. I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna walk up to him and say like, I dunno. It’ll come to me.” Ann bumped into several students, but currently her mental walk outside of the box took her attention. 

Tired of her escapades, she sat down in the classroom. Black Eagles. Professor Byleth pointed towards a chair, arm completely stretched out as if addressing the chair more than Annette, condemning it to Annie duty. Ann nodded rapidly and cursed the chair with her presence. It made a loud thud, as if confirming her choice for the elusive professor Eisner.

Byleth nodded with each head it counted in the classroom. Most of the students were there. Ann wasn’t the first exchange student: some Golden Deer seemed to have made the jump before her. Lorenz and Lysithea didn’t seem like people that could put up with Manuela’s looser level of teaching. Of course Leonie was there too. Rumours of her admiration for Jeralt easily spread and her mercenary schtick worked perfectly with Eisner’s history.

But she was the first Lion. And knowing Faerghus, this would come back to haunt her. Father might have left Faerghus, but Faerghus was everywhere where honor was a currency, and Father was under the impression he had simply gambled it all away. Nothing left to do but grieve an image of himself.

Byleth continued nodding, before sighing and shaking. Ann’s eyes dallied around the classroom in the same dance her professor had performed, her head swooping in one motion through the classroom like a child skipping through the hills.   
Finally the little karaoke bouncing note fell off a cliff as her eyes bounced to an empty chair.  
Ann sighed. Lin wasn’t there.

“Hello class.” Byleth said. “Our month’s assignment is to subdue bandits in the Tower of Black Winds. More information to follow as we arrive there. Let’s go.”

Ann’s face changed to her cold and frigid smile once she heard these words. More information to follow? Let’s go? Wha-? The Professor’s communication was pitiful. Maybe this is what she got for putting her fate in the hands of a teacher of a few months old. She gulped and followed the group, who seemed to roll well with the sudden announcement. Maybe there was an in-group? Maybe they had a letter system? Were the notes in the advice box actually important? These announcements couldn’t have been real, in any way. 

Ann was confused, but swiftly got on her designated horse (designated to her by Byleth pointing at the horse with one arm and at Ann with the other one.)  
She got on, looking around for familiar faces. Anyone.

The horses galloped through the gates. Onto the Tower of Black Winds. Onto the next step.

*  
Faerghus was cold at this time of year. Ann knew that, because Faerghus was cold in every part of the year, even in the middle of summer. The rain especially made it so that the Faerghan sun was playing its role as abandoning father, and it would make the tower’s assault even harder. 

It was refreshing to see her textbook in action. She’d spent the last month studying up on battle tactics, called “authority”, and reason magic. Hanneman’s class subject was less likely to find itself come true in life, though Annette hoped that battle tactics would be reserved to this month’s classes too.  
She didn’t see Linhardt. She didn’t see her father. Of course, she was used to the latter and she guessed the former has been quite the evasive little frogger as well. 

The professor took charge and ordered the troops to move towards Conand Tower. Ann looked through the trees to find other groups. Maybe they would attempt a pincher; She’s become quite adept at rallying troops. She always saw how Mercie would heal on the battlefield, and she wanted to use her own talents to do something similar. Now she could complement the healing with her strengthening the troops. 

She barely could spend the energy to think about her father, but of course by realizing that, she did think about him. Well, at least she didn’t have to confront her feelings about Linhardt. Shit, did it again.

Annie looked around. No pincher. Apparently the Professor planned a frontal assault. Speaking of which, she saw no enemies outside either. No blips on her radar. Just the quiet forest and the slow marching forward. “Niiice and quiet, niiice and quiet, just when you’re about to meet your father. Nice and quiet.”

It actually was nice and quiet at that moment. Ann hummed a song, putting her breath in long, sweeping strings of notes and entered the tower, positioning herself on her assigned spot. In the corner of the eye, she already saw the enemy that needed subduing, and quickly gave it a knowing nod. Her father didn’t respond.

She wanted to run. Fuck. How was this a hard decision? Finding her father was her life goal, her mind has had many conversations with him, at least ten of them starting with smacking him with the family heirloom. She didn’t have that one, but she did have a few spells that would blow some smiles on that miserable pile of secrets.

Maybe that was why she was pulled to Linhardt. He still didn’t feel real. To her, he was still that ephemeral light that floods her room, his little bob cut merely a human mold of the concept of that light that both eases and overwhelms Ann’s brain. The nice and theoretical concept of love and being loved.

She did something she never thought she would. She let fate decide. Those arms of the Professor? They would point. And they would point her to where she’s supposed to be. She gazed intently at Byleth and nodded. The void gazed back. Their arm stretched and Ann swears the professor made a thumbs down as it pointed to the knight. Annette’s breath became cold in her lungs. Faerghus cold. 

“Hi dad.” she said, shuffling to her destiny. “It’s been a while.” She wanted this moment to be dramatic and confrontational, but her tone was completely sincere. It has been a while and she’s happy that moment of silence didn’t last forever. She looked around. The rest was off to adventure. Gilbert tried to look for a distraction, but this was happening right here, right now. Or not.  
“I’m sorry Annette. We will talk after my duty is done.” 

Annette wanted to say something. Be mad, or whatever. She wished she felt more at this moment, but she was Faerghan first-and-foremost and so she desperately waited for the first enemies to arrive. 

The rest of the gang disappeared behind the wall, and so did her father. To be fair, the rest of the group circled the tower’s architecture and her father was a childish little cunt. He was next to her, picking up his axe to slay those that come running through the door. Annette wasn’t prepared for any part of this. Not built for any real fighting, instead rallying her father, which seemed to affect him. Not built for this reunion. She was strong, she learned how to be inspiring with her rallies, but she cannot outspire the spiral of knighthood and its rules, codes and silent agreements. 

And thus she agreed silently, flinging the occasional wind spell. The rest of the Black Eagles conquered the tower, with the Dominics rounding out the stragglers. It wasn’t the adventure she deserved, but after not sleeping for a month, she came to appreciate blowing off.  
“Ratatata-tatata-tatata-tatata-ratatatatatataaa” she whispered as she spewed sigils, drummed her legs and snapped her fingers in anticipation.

Annie was relaxing, in a way. She didn’t have to think about large, sweeping speeches to give. For now, she could just exist in the thin air between her and her father and celebrate it. Still, that small strip of air, that musk, blood-drenched slice of air, it cut as deep as his axe. They were close, but still so far away. Maybe she wanted too much. This halfway point would be nice enough if she reached out her hand. 

Her calm and meandering reasoning, both intellectually and critically-wounding-with-the-windly, came to a standstill as she heard a piercing roar from the top of the tower. Gilbert looked up with her. “Let’s go Annette.” he said.

“Yeah. Let’s.” Again, it wasn’t as dramatic as she wanted it to be. But it was nice. She really wanted to go to the top to fight the roaring beast.

The walk upstairs was awkward. While Ann’s thoughts flung themselves through her brain at record-speed, Gilbert seemed to march forward without any thought but this shallow concept of what his life is supposed to be. Annie tried to get into the right tempo of this march. One-two, one-two. Left-right. Left-right. It was weird to share something with her father again. Finally, their walks weren’t a chase, but they walked together. Next to each other.  
There was something about the tempo that made you forget about the world.   
One-two, one-two. Left-right. Left-right. Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Giant monster. Giant monster.

Giant monster.

Cool.

Coolcoolcool.

Annie had...spent some time in her own thoughts on that walk, but needed to focus now. Everyone was in position, Annie slyly waved at her new classmates, who she didn’t have a proper introduction to yet. They seemed nice. 

The broken husk of Sylvain’s brother, not so much. 

She didn’t know Sylvain, or other Faerghus nobility for that matter, that well. Living with her uncle, his territory was a small estate at Lake Teutates, and at the school of sorcery she mostly stuck to her own. Later she heard Lorenz attended the school too. She might’ve run into him before, maybe she didn’t. Who was to say. Ann felt overwhelmed in the city, but free-er. Sometimes it was nice to disappear and look at the world like it’s a stage, spectacle passing by as you live it.

This monster attack wasn’t one of those moments. Ann looked intently at her Professor as his commanding presence, well, commanded those around him. One after the other flung themselves into the monster, waiting for their turn in a dance of heals, magic attacks and swords. One-two, one-two. Each student with an affinity for melee weaponry seemed to pair up with a student more proficient in magic. One-two. One-two. It worked. Aside from the occasional scratch, quickly healed up by one of the assigned magical students, the rhythm was effective at subduing the monster. Ann added to the rhythm by rallying the person ahead of her. Dum-one-two, dum-one-two.  
It was like a concert of clashes, with Byleth as the conductor of this crisis. He really was talented. Even if their movements were stiff, the tempo fell into place perfectly.

Until one person broke the rhythm.  
Gilbert didn’t wait for the Professor’s cues. instead lunging himself at the monster at his first chance. The beast lunged back. With no defense to speak of, Gilbert found himself stuck between the wall and the maw of the beast, and the demonic monster made sure to capitalize off of the failure of the little knight that could, spitting acid and flinging rocks at him.

Ann would’ve closed her eyes if it weren’t for the beast in front of her and the fact her father needed the help. She didn’t look at Byleth and rushed to the stage to the music, stumbling through the rest of the audience. She quickly prepared a healing spell and rushed to her father’s side, healing his wounds.   
“It’s okay father, just breathe. I’ll take care of you.”   
Should she have slapped on a good ol’ ‘Like you did for me’, to really rub in the lack of a father figure in her life, like she did in at least twenty-three of her imagined conversations? Maybe, and she almost did.

But the beast attacked again. Trembling the earth of the tower, everyone close to the beast felt the tremor, heart beating as it drummed against her chest. Annie’s heart jumped up her throat, before gently floating down to its usual place. In the meantime, her lungs try to cough out everything in that throat. She breathed. Breathing helped.

Annette looked back and saw the problem. The rhythm has been broken. The position that Annette ran so carefully towards was meant for a melee attacker. Now it was her that stood right next to the monster, with no way of attacking it safely.   
And almost dying from the pain. She breathed through it, hiding in her happy place. She didn’t have the magical energy left to both attack and heal herself, and so she waited for the monster to be slain by those that were still in sync. The pain rung like an off-key triangle through the tower.

“Happy place.”  
Her mind rushed to Lin. She closed her eyes. Library...uuuuh...date. Reading her favorite book, looking at him to rest her eyes. Her heart gently fluttered in place. He was reading too. Good book. A bit convoluted in the representation of the diagrams, but the spacious and colorful organizing made up for it. But Seiros, those diagrams. The worst. A smile. Another joke about diagrams. The background noise of sword clashes and monster roars was nothing compared to the flickering of candles.  
Suddenly, Lin came closer. Sliding over the table. Now they were reading together. Now he came even closer. Next to her. A kiss. 

Out. Out. Out.

Ann jumped awake. “Gah.” she grunted, feeling the pain of her broken body that was chased out of her mind by her thoughts straying from their path. She grunted, concentrating on Byleth’s newfound rhythm. Her heart aggressively pumped with each fireball, sword strike and roars of the beast, her heart roaring along. All in the moment. And yet, the biggest panic was the thunderbolts of feelings she had. Her thoughts crashed, her happy place incinerated by a bazillion sparks. No time to sort it out in bad and good. For now, there was only fear and a cackling excitement, like a pinball smashing against the bumpers. 

Through the hurricane, Byleth yelled and pointed at the beast with one arm, and to Ann with the other one. She knew what to do.   
She drew a sigil and fired. A single blade of wind, to the eye of the disowned brother. The symphony ended with a woosh, a roar and a loud thud.

He fell. Miklan was no more. So much for a first impression with mainland nobility.

Her new class cheered. Her new friends cheered. Her Professor cheered. Her father stood up. She breathed out. One-two. One-two. Okay, a little gag there. One-two. Oh boy. Calm down.  
“Good job, Annette.” Gilbert’s voice added itself to the mayhem. “You were a true knight today. You followed the path of sacrifice. I commend you. I failed to take that path. It’s good to know you were ready to fight for a stranger like me.”  
If only she had the Crusher. She would’ve slapped.  
“Thanks Gustave.” she said. Fuck you, she thought. This turtle was faster than she realized. Must be the shell.

“So this is how it is. The path of sacrifice.” Annette uttered to herself. “To almost die for a stranger.”   
No, she was done chasing after the turtle. Not when her Achilles was still out there, and she realized she had fallen head over heels.


	4. There is Everything

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ann decides to consult Mercie with her problem, but runs into the limitations of her mind.

Months passed, but those months consisted of days, which consisted of hours. And every hour, the hurricane in Ann’s mind grew. Her father rejecting her, her mind rejecting a relationship with Lin. Ann had yet to leave her thoughts, which tugged her along a track of anxiety and fears. Flayn’s kidnapping was painful, but Gronder was more painful. Seeing everyone in the Blue Lions house get along, thriving under Dimitri’s watchful eye. It made her feel like she made a wrong decision, like the ones you can never reverse. Regardless of how she wanted to be better than Faerghus, she saw how much joy it brought to others. Ashe and Ingrid yearned to be knights, Felix and Sylvain were destined to be the highest nobility and Dimitri...Dimitri were to be king. 

She wondered whether this cycle was worth breaking. Her father failed to uphold his standards and left, and maybe in some twisted way, she did so herself too. Leaving the path laid out for her was hard, retreading it in her mind was even harder, as her anxiety relished in feeling the regret burn in her.

She was a Black Eagle now. Saving poor maidens and hunting the self-proclaimed emperors of the underground. She was proud of it, but not the high school experience she was promised, with bonds forged turning in life-long friendships. She left. She left that behind. “Ah, well” she said to herself. How much could she have lost in that department? She couldn’t imagine Felix taking well to her songs and Sylvain didn’t exactly seem like the type to have battle tactic conversations with.   
Today she was seeing Mercie again. That was nice. That was enough. She was enough. Even if Ann played hardball with her honor, heart and love like her father did, she would always have Mercie. It’s why she was such a tough negotiator towards life. Mercie was enough. As long as she was there, she had everything to win and nothing to lose. 

Time to go. Ann didn’t know why it felt like getting ready for battle, but it did. Ever since she transferred to Eisner’s class, battle became song and song became battle. She figured it was a side-effect from being mentored by a mercenary and of course the change it brought to her life didn’t help soothe her. She lost a life at the Blue Lions, which inevitably brought onto a slew of other changes that rolled out throughout the rest of her life. It was simple philosophy. Every step taken necessitates another step in the same direction. No two things can occupy the same space, and so each movement into a space pushes out the entity that was previously in that space, creating a chain reaction. Ann usually kept a good track record of the multiverse of Annie Dominic, every wind blown by her metamorphosis into a butterfly, but right now she was killing so many versions of herself everyday, sending out hurricanes with each step, it was hard to assert the best one was standing in front of the mirror. It was simply her. The one that survived. Survived battle, survived song.

Will survive a nice, light and breezy conversation with Mercie, she assured herself before walking out of the door and tripping herself down the stairs. The stairs seemed to extend everytime she went down them, a physical rift between her and Mercie. She counted to be sure time and space didn’t collapse under her. Forty-two. Still the same. It would always be the same, wouldn’t it? 

Before entering the dorms again to visit Mercie, Ann heard a voice calling. Of course, she didn’t hear it at first. Her battle song blasted through her brain too loudly to hear much of anything, but it came closer. It was Byleth, handing her a document.

Deus Ex Machina: Saviors That Drive Battle Forward.

And a note that said Reading Material for Remire Village Assignment

Ann recognized it, it was the material of last week’s class. Remire Village is where they would go next week, and apparently Lin is coming along too. It really came in handy, any extra note is a villager saved. Byleth tapped the document slightly, before pointing to Linhardt’s dorm room. Ah. “You want me to deliver this to Lin.” Ann said, not trying to gag rainbows upon saying his name.   
Byleth nodded.  
“Right. Well that’s fine.” Ann nodded, to signify how fine this was to her. She would just march up the stairs, and talk to him. Sure, you send students to rescue Flayn from a nightmare reaper, you can also send them to drop off some notes. No difference. “Huh.” Ann said to herself. Byleth had long left, so she had the space to muse in the open. “Guess it can’t be that different, can it?”

And so she took herself up the stairs, notes in hand, and her heart in her head. Her heart beating like a drum bursting over the battlefield. She read about it. Some armies make use of giant war drums to send signals among the troops. Caspar seemed to do the same thing, except with his voice. Thirty-one. The steps are the same from her dorm to his, but those final five steps. They differ. They change her life in a way any different step does. And so the butterfly smacks its wings….

The lights are on. She doesn’t hear anything, heart pounding in her mind. She can’t see what he’s doing either. The door is closed. She could knock, but that’d mean he’d open the door. She could say there’s a delivery, but she has the feeling that if she were to open her mouth, it would only externalize her internal screaming. And so, she stands one step away from everything. One step back, one drop and gentle breeze would ensure she would turn around, disappear and stop these beastly wings from flapping. She could stay and wait. Do nothing herself, but time would march forward and drag her along with its cruel talons. 

Or she could take one more step. One knock. “For fucks sake, I mean it’s one door Annie, what could it be? Ten inches?” she mouthed to herself, before knocking. Four little taps that would start the most captivating song. First, footsteps. Little taps, that somehow overpower her bursting mind. His footsteps moving towards her pounding heart. What a symphony it’s shaping up to be. The taps came closer and Ann felt the crescendo surge through her face, blushing in anticipation. It’s like a piano piece, with each tiny hammer tapping on the strings of her nerves. If it could just stay this way forever, if that door never opened and they’d just keep making music forever. But that door would open, and Ann had to face the music.

She heard the lock creak. So many choices. So many worlds are opening in front of her. The trumpets would sound, the veil of her world would fall before her. The wall that has inhibited her senses would rip in two.  
Ann would have to leave her love in someone else’s hand. When that lock opened, she would no longer be the sole author of her story and would lose control of the particular reality she has mended for herself. The butterfly would flutter in her heart, destroying this specific taste of love she had come to crave everyday. The scene would change, the dance she danced would involve another person. 

She would be seen. And heard. Known.

If she took a step back, she could hear the pleasant tingle of the piano hammers gently massaging her heart. If the door opened, the light of that room would flood her, wash away what she had curated. She couldn’t have that happen. 

And so she gently fluttered away, before the door swung open and the wall fell away.

Some forces you don’t mess with. She was content to remain a stranger to him. Some strangers are to die for, anyway. Maybe that’s the philosophy that made it to Adrestia. 

Fourty-two. 

Back at Mercie’s. “Oh sweet Seiros, you’re absolutely famished!” Mercie always knew how to read Ann, but it wasn’t that hard now that her face was flushed.   
“Morning walks, am I right?” Ann tried to force a smile to let Mercie get a glimpse of the play that she’s performing in her hand, but she genuinely smiled at that moment, revealing more than she could ever know.  
“I’ll get the sweets.” Mercie’s warmth beamed through the room. This was the safest she’s felt in a long time, but it lacks the distinct tingle that these past months have added to her internal soundtrack.   
“Thanks, I’m starved.” Ann sat down and looked around, fidgeting with her fingers, waiting for her to bring up anything. About Gronder, her father, ‘What do you think of that Linhardt guy’, to which she’d respond with the sweetest giggle to gently imply that it’s all very complicated.   
“There you go.” Mercie put the pastries on the table and took one for herself before chewing on it.   
“Oh Mercie these are amazing!” Ann took one of the sweets and ate it, swallowing it whole. “You’ve outdone yourself!”  
Mercie smiled. “Thanks Annie, that’s great to hear!” She poured a cup of tea. “I did my best on them for the rest of the Lions.” She took another one. “Consolation prize for losing the Battle.”   
Ann hollered at her own joke before telling it. “Glad you lost then. Good games by the way.”  
Mercie joined in the joy with a lighthearted laugh of her own. “Yes, I suppose I’m glad your class won.” 

Ann winced. Her class. Sure, it’s been a good few months since she left the Blue Lions, and she probably has been with the Eagles longer than she was ever with the Lions, but it was still weird. “The Professor is an absolute marvel, I’m learning so much!” she said excitedly, as an excuse to herself as to why she left the Lions. It was true, Professor Byleth was a mastermind and should’ve been the reason to switch classes, but it wasn’t. It was to chase her father, who she promptly let go after meeting him. Though, there were whispers of this Gilbert man coming along to Remire with the rest of the knights.   
“It’s really great.... Lots of adventures and stuff, y’know.” Thoughts are always better in the mind than when spoken out. Ah well, nothing to do about that flub of a sentence now. Not like you can go back and edit that later.  
“It sure is” Mercie replied as curt as possible. Ann wondered what she meant by that, but quickly fled into solitude to find the answer, rather than asking Mercie. Instead, she simply nodded. Sighed, maybe, before taking another pastry. “Maybe I should join your class! I was born as Imperial nobility, after all.”   
“Oh, that’d be nice! I’m sure you’d be a great help!” Ann raised her tea glass as if making a toast, but instead spilled her tea on the table, before scrubbing the stain out with her now-wet uniform sleeve. “Bet it’d be fun!”

“I am intrigued by your Professor, but I’m not so sure about Edelgard..I don’t know, I think I’ll have to think about it.” Mercie sat down again and took a sip of her tea. “What’s she like?’’ she asked as a follow-up question, but Ann shrugged her shoulders.   
“I don’t know her that well, really. Haven’t noticed anything off about her I mean..” she stumbled over her words. Ann felt interrogated by her best friend. She meant well, but it only made her feel ashamed. Ann was observant, sure, but Mercie could read people in a way that Ann couldn’t, or didn’t. Annie had too much to figure out about the world, she thought, to think about others’ place in it. “I talked to my father, at least.” There it was. The trump card. Now she won. 

“I knew something was tingling in your eyes, Annie! What did he say?” Mercie continued her quest for the evil powers she desired, like open communication between her and her best friend.  
Ann had already turned over this rock a billion times since the old man spoke its curses on her and she was sure she would do the same for another billion time, like her own Sisyphus rolling rocks in a hamster wheel. “Y’know, the usual.” she said in a disinterested and slightly sarcastic tone. Why does Mercie think she wants to talk about this? Just because she brought it up?   
“I see. Interesting.” Mercie poured some more tea, giggling at Ann’s joke.  
Ann furrowed her brows. Why didn’t she ask more about this? This is a huge event happening in her life, and Mercie took her overt disinterest at face value. She should know better! They were only halfway through this conversation!   
Ann groaned. She wants to share everything, but her mind centrifuges all possible topics into a merry-go-round, the horses prancing around. A new one coming into view before the previous one barely left her sight. In her mind, it was a perfect medley. The most romantic and dreamy carnival under the starry sky, a perfect sequence of events and emotions. All horses perfectly circling to the music. But every time she wanted to talk about something, a new horse would circle front and center to her mind, following the previous in an endless connected stream. Everything was connected. The professor, her father, Mercie, herself and….. Linhardt. 

And she didn’t want to mention Lin. Focussing too long on one point is bound to be nauseating. The carousel loses its magic in the real world. And she doesn’t want to lose the magic. 

“I prefer not to talk about my father.” Ann blurted out, as Gilbert rotated out of view and the next subject arose from the horizon. “We talked. That was what it was.” she clicked her tongue in frustration. It wasn’t what it was, but it was what she said, what she could grasp before the miniature horse rotated behind the pillar again.  
Mercie sucked her teeth. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

Well, he wasn’t dead, Ann thought. Though she supposed the sentiment was close to it. Was this what death was like? Maybe her father really did perish in Duscur. If she couldn’t hold him, talk to him or bring him home, this vengeful knight was a corpse, his lifeblood flowing away with his liege’s. It was an interesting thought to Ann, to see if there was a difference. 

“He’s not dead, so that’s something!” Ann pointed excitedly as if guessing the object in a particularly heated game of Charades. She used to play it with her dad, he would abandon her and then Annie guessed why she wasn’t good enough. Fun times.  
“So are you alright? It sounds you went through a lot the last few months.” Mercie always had a penchant for saying the right thing in each situation, laying bare the heart of the conversation with pinpoint precision.

Ann didn’t.  
“Oh yeah, that man is like...yeah.” Ann dug through her almanac of intricate metaphors. “It’s a closed door.” Ann assured her. She would make a reference about a play here, about two young sisters of which one grows up behind a closed door, seperated from her sister in fear of her ice magic, but she knew Mercie wouldn’t know what she was talking about. “I’ve let it go.”

Mercie nodded and smiled. “Good, good.”  
And so, for an hour, Ann’s mental carousel played hide-and-seek with her, sharing snapshots of her worldview with Mercie. The pictures she painted were blurry with her thoughts in an eternal motion, but she was content either way. Even the blurriest starry nights were art when Mercie was there as a spectator.   
“Heard you were going to Remire next week.’’ Mercie scrambled for a new conversation topic.  
Ann nodded. “We’re all prepared, and with the professor we’re in good hands.” And Lin too. Lin was coming too. Had she mentioned Lin was coming too?  
“Any tactics you’d like to share?” Mercie asked.   
Ann smiled. “Driving the battle forward and conquering the walls.” she said before taking the last pastry and the last sip of her tea, before sighing. Ann stood up. “It was nice, talking to you. I hope next time we can talk more about you.” She knew that trying to pry information from Mercie was a dead end, but she felt guilty for having given up on the endeavor today. Instead, she handed her a million pictures of a racing carousel. 

“Good luck driving the battle forward, Ann!” Mercie gave a handshake to Annie before she walked out of the door. 

Fourty-two. Back at her own room. Lin’s room was alighted, and the soft ticking and brushing of pen and paper filled the room. At Remire, there wouldn’t be a wall to hide behind. In Remire, walls are conquered. 

In Remire, the starry night would float above them both.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bit of a shorter chapter! Originally Remire was part of this chapter, but both my ideas for Remire and this chapter went into different directions.


	5. What do You See?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Remire is here, and Annette needs to make an important choice. To live or to die.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Made for Annette Rarepair Week 2021.
> 
> Note the new tag! Ann is put through the ringer in this one, which brings along some elements a good tad heavier than your canon-typical angst.

Annette slowly opened her eyes and looked around the room. Of course, it was still the room she went to bed in. Nothing changed about it. The light cracked through the wooden panes, but Ann was too tired to assign any significance to it. 

She slowly got up to put on her outfit. Right before left, left before right. The sun shot through the window, straight into Ann's eyes. “Good morning to you too, sunshine.” she said, rolling her eyes at the retina damage the beam-enlarging window gave her.

“Let’s see what else we gotta do today.” she said to herself as she glanced at the wall.  
Annie grew accustomed to her walls, pinning her notes on them. Little drabbles for songs, homework planning, seminar dates. It started out with just homework and general to-do lists, but soon her wall was plastered with paper, so she would never need any new thought again. It was a neat cycle, and a weekly routine to clean out the old and pin up the new. It was a good way to keep herself organized, and kept her thoughts from slipping through the cracks. “Bring back library book, got it!” “Read the syllabus. Done!”

Her eyes fell on one note in particular. “Remire: Conquering and driving the battle forward—-> Shattering”  
Ann smiled. “Conquering and driving the battle forward.” That was clever. Optimistic at best, a lie at worst. But it was clever.  
She gave it a second thought. If there was any day to tell him, it’d be now. It’d be something new, something to make these walls a little bigger than being the home of the creepy-creep dungeon song at the right hand corner of her desk.

She gave it a third thought, slowly cycling through the mental notes she barely dared to write down. It was a perfect time to tell him aesthetically, but she wasn’t sure. It would definitely be a big event, a big deal, and she didn’t really want to get that ship out of that bottle. The walls would be a little bigger, sure, but one wrong move and the house of cards would collapse.

A fourth thought, which in reality had morphed more into one omega-thought that she had ever since she left Mercie’s with the stupid idea to be proactive. A fifth thought. She did like him. An attraction that could only be sealed by paper talismans about the day-to-day business. She still liked him, he still was a force in her life that existed outside of aesthetics, considering she hasn’t seen him in anything more than passing glances. Schedule conflicts.

But today was the day to tell him. Time to end this. Today, she would be where she wanted to be. She grabbed her library book and went out.

Her morning walk that day was spent on thinking of any ruse possible to make it as natural as possible to drop a bombshell like that. “I love you.” didn’t explain the full story, and one counter-question from Lin, Seiros that name felt weird to say, would take the shattered glass and twist it into her.  
No, something more clever was needed.

More importantly, she needed courage. Cleverness got her an angle in, but it wasn’t the power needed to smash the walls that kept her shut in for so long.  
She breathed in. The air was cold and tense, as if even the dewdrops had to be parsed by Ann’s mind to add up to the answer of how to tell him.

What about a song? If only life was more like theatre, she could let her show-stopping lyrics shine a light on every angle. Too bad people generally talk in their regular voices and of course, too many metaphors could never make the point as clear as the real deal. Thing was, that thing was love, probably, maybe, and that’s a tough thing to describe in layman’s terms.

The monastery was really pretty at dawn, and the architecture was as impressive as ever. The air felt serene, only touched by the divine rhythm of the campaniles. Light danced through the rose windows that spread the light of Seiros’ to all directions of the continent.  
Annie only saw her thoughts, drifting past in crumpled notes. Faded white stars.

Walking into the library, she looked around through the door opening. Huh, no one there. Usually Tomas would be there to check in. Not that he was a talkative person, usually he just stood pouring over a book. She never noticed what book.  
“Guess I’ll be holding onto this a li’l longer then.” she murmured to herself.

“Lucky you.” a voice spoke from the other side of the door.  
“Hey, haha. I guess so. I'm sure any gal that has her hands on...” Ann looked at the cover of the book. “Pascal’s Triangle Revisited...is a very lucky maiden indeed.”  
Seiros fuck why did she say that. Maiden? 

“I’m sure of that! I must admit, it’s not my taste.” Lin said to her.

Of course she knew it was Lin speaking to her. Of course, she could enter. Or she could outright say what kind of mental torment he gave her by proxy. But now wasn’t the time. Would be unfair to Remire and its open fields and dalliant grass blades bowing to love, probably, maybe, so pure. And so she left, holding onto the book for another day. Mostly because at this point in time, she had nothing to say other than “You are my taste though.”, which she realized now was actually the perfect icebreaker, after which she immediately realized it was too late to run back and yell it into the void, or that it was too niche a reaction to use later.

The bell rang, it was time to get to class, anyway.  
And then it was time to expose her deepest emotional state of being, apparently. 

“Really?” Ann asked herself. All alone with him in a library and she didn’t have the guts? She shook her head in defeat, and to let the wheel of fortune of her incoming spiral land on the daily double, and sat down in her usual chair.  
“Okay class, I recovered from the plague.” Byleth started. “The people in Remire haven’t, so let’s help them. We don’t know what’s causing the illness, but it’s pretty tough. Okay, class dismissed.”

Ann got used to the debriefings being, well, brief. Not like every class was like this. Seminars, for example, were much longer and the regular teaching sessions proved that Byleth was a more than an adequate professor. Classes had a way of showing the angles to each situation, taught her how to be flexible and be ready to quickly switch strategies. Work smarter, not harder. 

Annette felt right at ease with that line of thought. Between her magical prowess and tactician aspirations, she was a calm and collected presence on the battlefield, able to funnel chaos into rhyme and reason, sometimes literally. She felt a powerful surge through her in even the smallest action, even a simple encouragement to a friend went a long way. A butterfly’s wing could create the perfect storm.

*  
The forest air did Ann well. That, and the creepity-creepy vibe of a monstrous plague kept Ann focussed, but relaxed first and foremost. A fritz of the wires. Normally, Annie and focus didn’t equal great results. Overthinking while walking results into tripping, overthinking while cooking results into a kitchen ban and overthinking while falling in love, probably, maybe, led to an endless tide. 

Simply seeing did a lot more, and since Ann was trained by a mercenary, she’d come to rely on her senses more than anything. The trick to see battle as music was his too. Annie didn’t overthink music, the next line was always next and music was never faster or slower than you want it to be. It simply was, and your thoughts just had to deal with it. If the thought didn’t fall in place in the rhythm, it had to come back later.

The full range of rhythms, but one tempo at a time. One-two one-two, she joined the pace of the soldiers around her. One-two, one-two. The trees around forming a single path ahead. Now, all she had to do was find Lin and take the step for her world to burst open.

A few miles later, the village appeared out of thin air and the bubble burst. Chaos was the name of the game and it plunged the atmosphere in a deafening roar.  
Villagers rampaged every inch of the small town of Remire, be it from panic or willful malice. Screams, declarations of destruction disrupted and dampened Ann’s forest bolero to a footnote in this cacophonous calamity.

Every possible limb of Ann fidgeted in synch, small Sagittae appearing with every snap, trying to regain her footing. One breathe in. One breath out.

She looked around, maybe he would be there, before locking eyes with the professor. Laser-focused on his commands, she waited for a signal. Forward. Okay then. She looked around once more, randomly, but the wallowing of villagers painted a vivid enough picture when combined with the wyverns locking down the area.  
All she saw was burning. And no, Lin wasn’t there. 

Another command. Forward once more. The strategy here was clear though, she would catch up and rally up and back up with her spells. Maybe she’d get to back up L- “Don’t say it Dominic, you human tangerine.” she grunted. This was a fight, a mission and so naturally, Faerghus took over. And Faerghus despised personal influence that wasn’t a rally of soldiers.

A villager’s scream pierced through her bubble of self-correction and calamity overwhelmed her. “Gotta keep it together.” she said, slightly tapping her thigh to send a signal to the brain if it didn't pick up on her encouragement before. Bad idea, it only sent up her breakfast more. 

She really needed Lin now. She really needed him to be there, to hold her and to be there. Ann knew it was unfair to ask that of him, when to him she might just be a voice behind a door. But she really needed him to have her mind leave this ghastly moment and exist together as lights in a hallway, To cross the last halfway in a happily-ever after. To feel less alone in a world on fire. 

But he wasn’t there. He disappeared on his own, leaving nothing but burning air around Annie, leaving her to step ever forward on a road that isn’t hers. He was asleep, probably, doling around in his mind. Ann had nothing but sharp air cutting in her skin.

Another command. 

Ever forward. Through the grass. She passed legions of soldiers, but she was on her own regardless. Lin was nowhere to be found. She didn’t try to look around anymore, those angles felt irrelevant now. Heart bursting in her chest, she marched forward. She wanted an adventure so badly and she sure got it. 

She heard the firing of a spell. Ann quickly tilted her head, but the spell came from the hills in front of her. The figure revealed itself as Solon. Weird name. 

Out of all the thoughts spinning through her brain, one shot through her as clear and sharp as an arrow. Her father had faced this before. Her father had faced worse. Faerghus had faced worse. And in true Faerghan fashion, she stood in the wind to make her mind go blank. Time for a new strategy. 

Her senses kicked back in. It wasn’t music blaring through her mind now, her heart didn’t slow down. But it galloped over the plains, hooves tapping up and down the ground. Driving the battle forward. One-two-three, one-two-three.

This is what she loved. This is why she came to Black Eagles. This adventure. She thought of all the classes. “Pascal’s Triangle: Revisited”. It was a refined taste, sure. But right now, all she could see was, well, everything. Everything fell back into place, back in tempo. She got a proper look at the wyvern formation. “Oh, *that* is clever. Oh Eisner you never cease to amaze me.” she yelled over the battlefield.

She looked around her, but she didn’t look for anyone and that is when she *saw*. These walls were always bigger. There was Lysithea, learning dark magic, now blasting the knight they encountered in the catacombs.One-two-three. She saw Petra, Edelgard and Dorothea rounding out the villages, strategically routing using their long range spells. One-two-three.

And she saw Jeralt, speeding towards Solon from behind her. Ann counted. One-two-th-

Oh.

That wasn’t good. He already took a lot of damage from the skirmishes in the grass, and two more blasts from whatever Solon’s magic consisted of would surely wound him severely.

One-two.

She looked around the battlefield. She only had one more turn to act, if she ever wanted to have a chance to catch up.  
That is, if she would survive Solon’s blast. 

She had to. It was the only way to walk a knight’s path. It beat getting herself worked up about a boy that doesn’t even know how to tell time.  
One thing was clear. This juggling, this tip-toeing had to stop. These feelings, this spiral could not be kept up with. It was time to shatter the window, wall and ceiling. Any way possible.  
She was already living for a stranger. The only way out of that was the Faerghan way.

To die for a stranger. 

She sprinted forward and charged a Sagittae. One, two, three bursts of light showed around her fingertips, revolving around her hand. Annie held the planets in her hand that no one ever bothered to hold. Now, she stood eye to eye with Solon.

One-two.

She heard a faint command, but she was determined to end this right now. 

One-two-three. The three spheres of energy took flight, crashing into Solon. 

Halfway.

Solon now charged his own blast, trills shaking the earth as he did. Ann looked at Jeralt and nodded. One of them had to take the blow.

Solon chose Ann. A dark blast of energy crashed through the air, and Ann heard a powerful ring in her ears, drowning out every sound or yell the rest of the battlefield made. Typical Annie, she only hears the ring in her own mind. 

But Ann still stood. Halfway to death is never completely dead. Even if death was at her doorstep, ready to snuff out the light, it had to take another step. And Ann wouldn’t let Solon take one more step. 

She panted, breath pouring out of her body. Even a single step would’ve pushed her out of this air, leaving nothing but dust and blood.  
It was this air that she crafted. This air that she used. Forming a blade of air, a tiny butterfly’s wings fluttering, Ann fired her spell.  
Annie shattered the walls of the universe. Air cutting through air, cutting through Solon. The little butterfly made a hurricane. 

But he didn’t fall.

The air pushed out of her never returned and pushed her to the cold floor of Remire. She saw the stars. The stars that, if left in their place, would allow her to be swallowed by darkness whole. What music would they play when they put her in the ground, the cold dirt encasing her completely?  
“There is always another step to take. I’m sorry father.”

She tried to get back up, readying her magic once again, knees still weak, before falling on her knees. She tried to dodge, but she couldn’t spend one bit more of energy. She had reached her final halfway, her final destination the same as everyone’s. Just a bit sooner.

Suddenly, Ann felt a force touch her body. It felt strong, but gentle just the same. It mended the air around her, but the sensation flooded through all of her nerves just the same. It was the walls crashing around her, allowing the stars to shine on her. She had never felt so touched, loved or known before. Light itself had chosen to bless her, piercing through all known laws of space. 

The stars moved to fight the darkness.  
Jeralt swooped in and pierced his lance through Solon’s body. 

Annie fell to the ground, relieved, gazing back at the stars.  
“Was that Pascal’s Triangle?” a voice said. It wasn’t just a voice now, though. Linhardt sat next to Ann and lied down, as they gazed at the stars together. Ann looked around. Between where Solon used to stand, where Lin was and where she was, it did resemble a triangle.  
“Was that you?” Ann smiled, still showing restraint around him for some reason, though her heart was bouncing up and down like a fish out of water. “Who healed me, I mean.”  
“Yes. But I knew you’d pull through. You’re smart like that.” Lin answered, smiling and winking.  
Ann cried. In all the times she tried to see the world from behind the glass, to take steps, she never noticed how others could look back. Step towards her. 

Ann held out her hand, sweeping it through the cold air that was recently cut by the grass blades. Lin held out his hand, and clenched it in Ann’s and slowly tugged her towards him.  
Ann did the same, and so the distance between them became smaller and smaller, until eventually there was no more air between them and they lied arm to arm under the starry skies of Remire.

She didn’t hear any shattering. The world wasn’t made of glass. It was made of air, and the thing about air is that it’s very thin.

It only takes a step.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so mucn for reading! I really appreciate it, since it’s in some ways based on my worldview and that’s a scary thing to put in a story about war criminal school kids!


End file.
